Today's episode picks up with Tien holding
off Cell while the androids begin to make their escape. Tien uses everything
he can to keep Cell at bay, but ends up collapsing from exhaustion from
the effort. Cell, angry that such a "weakling" was able to slow him
down kicks him across the island and is ready to squash tien when suddenly…

Goku appears.

Cell is interested on meeting Goku, and
is surprised when Goku tells him that he needs one more day to get strong
enough to fight him. Cell obviously is amused by this, and laughs heartily
in that new beefy voice of his. Suddenly Goku senses that Piccolo is
alive and grabs Tien and teleports to Piccolo's location. Cell decides
that he will fight Goku now and is about to attack when Goku teleports
again, much to Cell's frustration. He then resumes his quest to find
18.

Meanwhile, Krillin finally gets the remote
form Bulma and lo! Trunks and Vegeta finally emerge from the hyperbolic
time chamber at the end of the episode.

The Review

Man, it was just one of those episodes
where the Celestrian "action-o-meter" was on the low side. Oh well,
there were some interesting developments in this episode, and thank
the heavens that Vegeta and Trunks are finally done!

ANIMATION: RECYCLED FOOTAGE! The first ten minutes of this
episode where Tien is triple blasting Cell I saw three sequences of
animation uses again and again. YUCK. After about minute 5 I was pretty
surprised that they were prolonging this sequence. The rest of the episode
was par, and the end sequence with Trunks emerging was very well drawn,
"Trunks is lookin' like a killa'." However, this was not enough to save
this score from my wrath and fury.2.5/5

CAMERA WORK / CHOREOGRAPHY: Despite the recycled animation,
some of the choreography was pretty decent. I was glad to see that the
animators built Goku's teleport up to frustrate Cell. Some of the close-ups
scenes where getting rather bland after the third consecutive shot.
All in all pretty decent, and not too much to get worked up about.3.5/5

MUSIC / SOUND: Eh… what are you gonna do about this. The sound
effects were decent, and the music was pretty much the same. There's
not much I can say about this that isn't repetitive.3.5/5

VOICE ACTING: Actually that wasn't too bad today. I admire the
fact that FUNimation was able to get the voices to portray the severity
of some of the situations without seeming too cheesy or overdone. Goku
had his usual angry yell when confronting Cell. It was better today
then most.4/5

DIALOGUE: Also well done. Too bad FUNimation can't do this in
every episode. It was refreshing to see some self-analysis in the dialogue
when Cell commented to Goku, "…and all you can say is see you tomorrow?"
If they can keep this up, they'll up the quality of the English episodes
tremendously, but I doubt that will happen. 4/5

PLOT: Heavy duty today. We saw Tien buy the world some time,
Goku reveals himself to Cell, and Trunks and Vegeta emerge from the
Time Chanber. That's quite a bit for any DBZ episode, and was well presented
(except for that recycled footage…damn bastards!….). Wow. 5/5

OVERALL: Man, I really wish DBZ could have balanced the plot
days with the action days to keep the action addicts like me on a steady
trip. However, let me say that I was very pleased with how the plot
unfolded today. I was still glued to the set, though the first 10 minutes
really hurt. Many might wonder why recycled footage bothers me so much,
but think of what they could have done with those 10 minutes… Though
a lot of things were pretty bland, the plot came through big time and
it has helped save the score in my book.

The Celestrian gives today's episode and overall score of 4/5

For those waiting on my Ninja Scroll review, I will try to get it in
this week.